A Funnelweb World

A while ago, I bought one of those Creative VADO videocams. Really cool gadget, great for creating short clips and publishing them to the likes of YouTube for sharing.

If you have good content to film, of course. And that’s the problem with user-generated content. The web is filled with rubbish - videos of pets (like my first VADO production), pointless blogs (er….. moving right along),  inane comments and so on.

Its not that the technology isn’t there to support the creation of great user-generated content - the current version of WordPress truly means anyone can create and manage their own stuff these days. And the changes proposed with the new HTML 5 standard will make it even easier for webmasters to enable it on commercial sites.

Its all about what’s published. And has been ever since the web really took hold in the late 90’s. Back then the mantra was CONTENT IS KING and its still the same today.

The big difference is that in these web 2.0 days, the “content” in question is far more likely to be user-generated.

USER-GENERATED CONTENT IS KING. I predict that will be the emerging message for 2009.

And that presents interesting challenges but also opportunities for organisations that work to embrace user-generated content on their own platforms for commercial gain.

Just how exactly to make money from it.

It requires innovative thinking - the idea of simply building your own community and hoping users will populate it and stick around has proven to be difficult for all but niche organisations. And adding ratings and reviews tools to sites is also now so commonplace as not to provide commercial advantage anymore.

There are some good examples of using user-generated content in non commercial organisations such as change.org. But I’ve not seen that many on commercial sites.

However, ideas such as inviting guest bloggers to post (Jamie Oliver perhaps, on a cookery site), and encouraging user colloboration around producing a film script (e.g. which a tv site could then fund the production of) might be worth exploring.

Basically targeting certain users as content creators or guiding users as a group through creating content that an organisation can then add the final touches to, to monetarise.

Just a thought. Right, better get on with publishing my next crap video to YouTube.

This morning I saw a story on CNN about change.gov. It’s a website set up by the Obama transition team to harvest ideas and feedback on their policies, priorities and so on.

When browsing for it, I accidentally discovered another “change” website. This one is change.org, calling itself a “social action network”.

The great thing about these two sites, beyond the excellent causes and issues they discuss, is the fact that the information flow is most definitely two-way. These sites are excellent examples of using web 2 tools for social benefit.

And not only are conversations and debates taking place among the site hosts and their visitors but in fact the sites themselves are also examples of what I would call “web theatre”.

By web theatre, I mean the following. It’s a well researched fact that the majority of visitors to web 2 - type sites (social networks, social tagging, microblogging and so on) tend to lurk rather than participate. That the participation by the “masses” is actually participation by “the few, watched by the masses”.

Clever site hosts can make the most of this level of participation to further communicate their messages to the masses, and this is what is being done in an excellent way by these two sites, especially change.gov.

Instead of pushing their messages blindly without allowing for open debate to take place on their turf (hence driving it to blogs etc where they have less influence) or when it does, simply ignoring it, the Obama team are sharing their ideas and plans and openly encouraging feedback, whether positive or not.

And responding to it. That’s the key to the “theatre” bit - performing with the few participants for the mass of lurkers.

On top of discussions and digg-like voting, they are also sharing information about the meetings they are having with outside groups. Even to the point of sharing agendas, presentations and so on. (Have a look at the “Your seat at the Table” section of the site).

If a new government can do this, imagine the opportunities available to other organisations. Greater collaboration with staff, customers, their community of visitors, greater participation in driving their agendas, greater transparency…. imagine.

And imagine how terrified the boards of various multinationals must be.

Yesterday I read Don Tapscott’s brilliant article in the Guardian. (He was the guy who wrote the excellent book, Wikinomics). It helped me feel that I wasn’t being unreasonable in wanting to find somewhere where “work” really could be “fun”. Hey, there is a whole generation of people who think that way.

He sums the dilemma up perfectly and big organisations really should take notice.

He suggests that work = fun when you are able to choose where, when and how to work and you have the right organisational structures and toolsets (mostly web 2.0 tools) in place to support that choice. And when you have challenging problems to solve and can work collaboratively with whoever you need to work with to get the job done, and share common goals and achievements.

The crucial point about this is that for the new generation of workers (”net-geners”) coming through, they expect that to be the norm. Organisations that don’t sit up and take notice of the needs of their future workforce, which have or are growing up with the web, are going to find challenging times ahead.

From the article:

It’s a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The net-geners arrive at work, eager to use their social networking tools to collaborate and create and contribute to the organisation. However, they are shocked to find technological tools more primitive than the ones used in school. The organisation still thinks the net is about websites presenting information, rather than a Web 2.0 collaboration platform. Then the organisation bans Facebook at the office because it suspects net-geners are chatting with friends and throwing digital snowballs when they should be working - thus depriving net-geners of their link to friends, to fun, to colleagues. Pretty soon, they head for the exit.

His article was inspiring.

If there are a whole bunch of people out there seeking the same things as me when it comes to work, then there must be some organisations out there (not many, its true) who are starting to respond to  these needs - I’ve just got to keep on looking.

Last week I discovered Google Website Optimiser. It’s a great free service that allows you to perform some simple A/B and multivariate tests on a website. And it helped me to understand more about what these types of tests are, and how to set them up.

First, A/B Testing.

Put simply, A/B testing is where you test two complete pages in order to see which one has the greater conversion rate to your desired target page.

To try this out, I created a copy of my original London for Free homepage and simply removed some text and links, saving it as index2. Then, using google’s wizard, I added some javascript code to each version of the home page as well as to the target conversion page (which I chose to be my bus tour page).

The idea was to see which page was the best version when it came to encouraging people to click the link through to the bus tour page.

All well and good, except that the quality of the google code was awful. Even though it validated for google’s purposes (allowing my test to run), the W3C validator hated it. I managed to fix two elements of the code but everytime I edited the third part, the optimiser rejected it.

So I persevered with buggy code just to see how this test would work. After running it for a few days, it became clear that the page with less options encouraged greater conversion to the bus tour page. Probably fairly obvious, but it was an excellent way to get my head around how to set up and run A/B tests.

Multivariate Testing

This is where, instead of having two complete pages to test, you select only one page and indicate the sections or elements of that page that you want to vary and test. You still need a conversion target but you can test say several different images and see which one encourages greater clickthroughs to the conversion page.

I removed the A/B test code from the home page and decided to run a multivariate test on it, varying the text in one particular style element, the subfeatures section. I created two versions of the text, both aiming to encourage users to click through to the bus tour page.

Then, using the google wizard, I dropped some javascript code into both the home page and the target page, and copied my “variant code” directly into the google dashboard. The variant code is effectively a second version of the “subfeatures” ID code snippet.

(Yet another reason for using div IDs in page designs).

I’ve now been running this test for over a week and though the results are interesting, what has been of most value to me is to be able to understand how easy it is to use the google tool and how multivariant testing works.

I need to try and validate this google code and will probably also extend the tests to include multiple variants and see how it goes.

That’s tomorrow taken care of, then

Today I visited ecommerce expo in London. It was interesting, not only for the presentations on social media but also to see the number of snake oil vendors still operating in the marketplace.

You know, the types of guys who’ll sell you a custom website for £4k (5 pages only, and SEO advice extra, of course) and then charge you a commission on top of it for any sales you make.

It made me think of Hector and how he gets apoplectic every time I tell him how much it costs to service my car, and what they actually do for it. “£xx for an oil change!”  and so on. But he knows a thing or two about cars - don’t most dads??

But cars are as alien to me as the web is to him. If I wasn’t looking after his website, I’m sure he’d think £4k was a bargain.

And therein lies the problem when it comes to these vendors. If you don’t know enough - just enough - about what service they are actually offering, how much work they would do etc, how can you know whether you’re being ripped off or not. How would you know whether you are paying for something that is very difficult, or something that is quite straightforward (and that you could do yourself).

So I thought about how someone could become better informed about the web. Not enough to be a developer but enough to know when you’re being taken for a ride.

In my view, its simple. Make use of all the free tools out there, build yourself a web site and practice using them. For example:

• get yourself a free web editing package (you could even use something like Aptana Studio, which you can download for free) and some cheap web space (e.g. from 1and1 hosting) and create a simple web site. It doesn’t really matter what it’s about. The aim of this is to develop your understanding and confidence of html/xhtml and css.
• If you don’t know much about those “languages”, do the excellent free tutorials on w3cschools first
• Once you’ve created your site, upload it to your web space, and have a cup of tea!

• then, learn about accessibility and web standards by running your site’s live pages through the w3c markup validation service. This is by far the best way to learn about how to debug your html and css pages and make them standards compliant and largely accessible.

• then start exploring the world of plug-ins available for your site, starting with something simple such as a google adsense or an amazon affiliate plugin. (And make some money while you’re at it

• just go to google / amazon, create an account, copy the script they give you and follow their instructions to include it in one of your html pages. This is the simplest way to become familiar with the world of javascript, because what you are basically doing is embedding some javascript into your site

• while you’re at it, include some code from google analytics

By the end of all that, you’ll know a little about how easy it is to build a standards-compliant web site, how easy it is to include plugins into it and also gain some familiarity with “presentation layer” things such as accessibility, analytics, SEO and web marketing.

And at this layer, a simple site isn’t really that much different to how big CMS systems work. They still use css for design layout, they still use html / xhtml for content rendering, they still require metadata to be added to each page (keywords etc, which are important for SEO) and they still use javascript (and sometimes also iframes) for inserting plug-ins and pulling content through etc.

So you’ll also know at a basic level about how CMS systems work at presentation layer level.

(They also use design templates, content wizards, user permissions, application script calls and so on but the fundamentals of css, xhtml and javascript remain.)

You’ll still be a long way from being an expert but hopefully you’ll feel more informed about just how “difficult” some of this web stuff really is.

The web equivalent to being able to change your car’s oil yourself or at least know if you’re being ripped off!

My dad runs his own business, I guess he employs around 30 or so people. I work for a company where the IT dept alone is probably 10 times that size. And that’s not unusual for big organisations.

And having now worked for several large companies, I’m becoming more convinced that companies of a large size are just not geared up right for the web 2.0 world. They are still too much like oil tankers.

I’m particularly referring to marketing and IT departments. And here’s why I think that.

IT

I manage my dad’s website. Whenever he wants a change made to it - anything from creating a new page to editing a photo or pdf - he just sends me an email. One email. And I plan the change, make the change, test the change and deploy it. He then takes a look at it and if its not right, I change it again until its what he wanted.

I suggest it takes at least 10 times as long, 10 times as many emails (oh, and let’s throw in the number of people involved, the number of conference calls, documents and meetings required) to get the equivalent change done in any typical large organisation.

Hardly agile. Not the most responsive. And totally wrong for our growing web 2.0 world where things have to be done quickly.

Yes, I appreciate the need for risk management, governance and so on but this approach to managing IT change just doesn’t work for the web. It really doesn’t. I agree it is probably necessary for big corporate system changes where requirements can be quite clearly defined and outcomes predicted but its not right for web changes where often the preferred solution isn’t known until its seen. There are too many people and layers of mgmt involved, for starters.

Never mind doing the change itself - you usually need to debate it, document it, challenge it, plan it and so on. (Ask yourself in a typical project within any large org, what proportion of time is spent physically implementing the change?) Its bizarre.

The solution seems to me to be strikingly simple - adopt more agile and collaborative ways of working. Create small cross-functional, multi-skilled teams and empower them to deliver the project objectives. Remove as many layers of bureaucracy for them as possible and just let them get on with it. What’s the worst that can happen? Create some / minimal controls to guard against this - but don’t go overboard.

That’s why small organisations are probably more agile than larger ones - they have less people getting in the way of change, for starters.

Marketing

The other day, when talking about his website, my dad happened to mention an enquiry he received through it from a new customer in Perth. He then went on casually to say that he put the customer in direct contact with his supplier in China so they could discuss the enquiry (about product spec) directly, and in more detail.

Customers / suppliers talking to each other. Without the organisation.

I thought about how difficult it would probably be to do that in many large organisations, and pondered why this was the case.

Now I’m definitely no expert in marketing but I think its because in typical large organisations, you probably have whole departments whose very existence depends on them managing the brand and controlling the messages around it. Its historical, from when messages could be controlled and sent one way only. The thought of customers and suppliers now talking about their products without their knowledge is probably terrifying to them.

Not sure if this is something about a lack of trust (why do many organisations seem to naturally think that if given the chance, customers will say bad things about them??), but I doubt its sustainable in a web 2.0 world.

This is traditional marketing. Web 2-based marketing (also known as social media marketing) is multiway, participatory and user-generated. Its also loads cheaper and I suspect more insightful.

And I think its the future.

And totally not what many large marketing departments are probably about. They’ve got to change, to trust the conversations that will happen or are already happening and to become a part of them. There are loads of opportunities for customer insight, surely.

One of the things I’ve been keen to do for a while is to add some better comments functionality to London for Free to make it feel a bit more web 2′y.

And as things have gone a bit quiet on the work front lately, I thought I’d seize the moment today to make a start.

I discovered an excellent script from GentleSource, which seemed to do the trick nicely. All I needed to do was to buy another mysql database from my webhost and download, install and configure the script. Then add it to some pages.

Simple - but there was of course the small matter of 150 code validation failures once the code was embedded in my site.

<rant>

Why can’t developers write validated code? If I can do it - and I’m not a developer - why can’t they. Or is it that they won’t, or can’t be bothered.

Its the equivalent of writing a letter filled with lots of spelling and grammatical errors and they ought to be slapped with wet fish. Didn’t they learn how to write properly? Honestly.

Guys, here’s a link for you - use it?

</rant>

Faced with more failures than the X Factor panel, I ended up pulling the script apart, re-writing the include.php file and, instead of including the comments form as an SSI, sticking it into xhtml pages as an iframe. At least this way, I removed all the reported code failures and also had more control over the look and feel of the comments form through being able to edit the style sheet for it.

I’ve managed to get it working for two walks sections: cultural and royal walks and hope to get the rest done over the weekend.

Now I just need to sit back and wait / hope for comments

In the meantime, I’ve got other challenges to prepare for, like being the chair of our local tenants and residents association. Such an honour, I feel very humbled to have been voted in and am determined to do a good job for my local community.

Am also starting - just starting, mind - to think about how nice it would be to set up my own business, working in partnership with some selected and trusted contacts rather than forever struggling against the insanity of corporate UK workplaces.

I know loads of extremely talented people and its interesting that they seem to also be starting to feel the same way about the concept of work.

Just need to come up with that elusive “brilliant business plan”. Time to phone Hector again, I think

The anniversary of Sept 11 this week got me thinking about how far we’ve come with the use of web 2.0 tools and methods for sharing information in only seven years.

Back then, I think the media coverage was measured by how quickly organisations could update their web pages, capture and show film footage and photos, and locate people to interview. Blogs and YouTube weren’t yet mainstream, sure there were some newsgroups and forums but I suppose most people turned to the tv and other mainstream media for their information.

Imagine if a similarly significant event happened today - using web 2.0 tools people could post updates on presence awareness tools such as twitter, send photos and videos from their mobile phones to flickr, youtube and so on, and share their feelings in social networking groups and blogs. And get newsfeeds on their mobiles.

News coverage would truly be by the masses. Our record of history would definitely be different - no longer just the “official” (read govt-endorsed, corporate funded) version of events but made up of real stories covered by real people who were in various ways a real part of the event. A social version.

A pretty big difference in a short amount of time.

Imagine back to other significant events, earlier in our world history - the end of world war 2, say.

And imagine how different the coverage and information sharing about future major events will be. Once mobile connectivity is more reliable.